Recent Wins – March 2019

Sequor Law founding shareholder, Ed Davis, and attorney Nyana Miller, together with other members of the Sequor Law team, recently secured a $22 million civil theft judgment for a South American finance company. The client had lost $8.6 million to the thief, who attempted to hide behind a complex scheme involving a Curacao investment fund, the fund’s professional managers, several brokers, and a corporate entity that received the moneys as custodian for another entity. After years of litigation (including an appeal relating to service of process that was heard by the Venezuelan Supreme Court), the trial court found the corporate custodian and the individual who controlled that company liable for unjust enrichment, conversion, fraud and civil theft.

Greg Grossman and Nyana Miller faced an issue of first impression regarding the revenue rule and Chapter 15 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The revenue rule is the common law principle that one sovereign does not collect or enforce the taxes of another (absent an exception, such as a tax treaty). In a cross border bankruptcy case where the largest creditor is the foreign tax agency and the debtor argues that the bankruptcy was a means of enforcing foreign tax claims, Sequor defeated a motion to dismiss the Chapter 15 case. Judge Delano of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida held that a court in a chapter 15 case does not administer claims and therefore recognition of a foreign proceeding cannot violate the revenue rule.

The Fourth District Court of Appeals affirmed a final judgment entered in favor of First Citizens Bank & Trust Company, N.A., represented by Greg Grossman and Dan Coyle of Sequor Law. The Court rejected the appellants’ arguments that causes of action against the borrowers and guarantors for breach of note and breach of guarantees could not have been assigned by the FDIC, on behalf of Sun American Bank, to First Citizens after Sun American Bank had obtained a final judgment of foreclosure.